italics into srt - how?

Hello.

I have an .srt file and it has a section in which the lines are in italics.

Examining the file, you can see the tag to produce this effect is <i>.

I throw the movie into divxtodvd which, in case anyone didn't know, quite easily authors optional subtitles that dvd shrink can grab and add to your dvd.

I have tweaked the srt in Subtitle Workshop and it plays fine there.

The burn produces perfect results except for the italics bits, when it chooses to show the <i> tags as though they were part of the general speech.

Is this a problem with the .srt or something within divxtodvd?

Any ideas, as to what to do?

Thanks.